Many people underestimate the importance of the ability to focus and its impact in our daily lives.
It's common practice for people to blame their woes on genes or a bad lot in life.
Intelligence and a solid memory are believed to be out of reach of the common person.
While we can look to our inheritance to some degree, there is also hope for everyone looking to boost their brainpower.
Taking the time to improve concentration will have a dramatic effect on learning, retaining, and recalling information.
Concentration is a skill, and with effort and dedication, it can be improved significantly.
There's no doubt that there are roadblocks on the path to improved focus.
Here are some ways that you can work on enhancing your ability to concentrate.
Remove Distractions: All it takes is a look around at the connected world in which we live today.
E-mail, mobile phones, Facebook, the Internet.
All of these forces chip away at our ability to sit and concentrate for long enough to get solid work done.
Eliminating, or at least minimizing distraction is an absolute must.
Set up distraction-free zones in your home or office.
Make it a point to have designated times when you turn off your phone and email programs so you can be completely involved in whatever project you are working on.
These changes will make an enormous difference in your concentration.
Stop Procrastinating: There are few things that sabotage productivity more effectively than procrastination.
We are so tempted to put off tasks we either don't want to do, or would just rather not do at this time.
Recognize your mind's resistance to what you know is a task that's important and that needs to get done.
Just being aware that your brain is setting up roadblocks is the first step in defeating procrastination.
Power through the resistance and tell yourself you're just going to work on it for five or ten minutes more.
Usually that's all it takes to overcome the resistance, and you will usually be good to go for much longer.
End Multitasking:People are proud to announce to the world that they are great at multitasking.
Science tells us otherwise.
We know that the brain can only do one task at a time.
Trying to to many things at once makes each individual task take longer to complete.
Figure out what the most important thing that you need to do is, and work on that alone.
When you have made adequate progress, shift to another project, and so on.
Purge Your Mind:Our minds are always running at full steam, and sometimes the thoughts that we are juggling in our heads get in the way of concentrating on a given task.
Taking some time each day to empty our heads is a great way to clear the way for focused thought.
There are several ways that you can accomplish this.
Meditation is a fantastic means of quieting your mind, increasing your awareness, and fine-tuning your concentration.
Another way is to do a brain dump, where you sit with a piece of paper and start writing down every thought as it comes into your head.
Plan to go through this list at a later time to identify items that need following up so your brain can let it go.
Take about five or ten minutes to do this, and you will see a tremendous improvement in your ability to concentrate.
We are not doomed to a life of distraction.
Concentration improvement is within every person's grasp if you take the time to hone and refine your abilities.